


she had called you beautiful

by aleyha



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-18
Updated: 2015-01-18
Packaged: 2018-03-08 03:44:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3194024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aleyha/pseuds/aleyha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Haze came to define your time together. Athena would come down from the heavens, and with her, in all her startlingly clear glory, a heavy bronze-tinted mist; it settled over your exposed bodies, twining around them as you moved together, exchanging kisses and sharp words.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>queer re-imagining of the medusa myth // for asta</p>
            </blockquote>





	she had called you beautiful

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gnen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gnen/gifts).



_i._

She had called you beautiful. Again and again, that one word, _beautiful._ Never pretty. Never sexy. Never gorgeous, stunning, ravishing. But beautiful. 

You were beautiful. 

 

 

_ii._

Haze came to define your time together. Athena would come down from the heavens, and with her, in all her startlingly clear glory, a heavy bronze-tinted mist; it settled over your exposed bodies, twining around them as you moved together, exchanging kisses and sharp words. She tasted of nectar, and she smelled of gunpowder and old parchment. Her eyes were hard as steel and her tongue sharp as knives, olive skin stretching taut over muscles toned under the cry of battle.

 

 

_iii._

Poseidon was charismatic as hell, you’ll give him that.  

He came during wartime. Athena, being Athena, was away, mired in the mud of the trenches, splattered by the blood of the guilty innocent, mostly whispering into the grey-covered ears of the Great Tacticians as they leant over maps. It was what attracted you to her in the first place: her strategic wit and unflinching grit. She was hard where you were soft, ugly where you were beautiful. She had broken your heart when she left, but you couldn’t have loved her if she had stayed. You’d told her as much.  

You didn’t recognise him at first, when he first limped into the seaside café at the end of September, dragging with him bitter winds and the stench of sea-weed. You were seated by the make-shift bar, pieced together by crates, nets and rejects of the ocean; your fingers were tapping on the license plate of a land you didn’t recognise. Though you hate it, hate the bitter taste and its scorching jolt, you were drinking coffee – it was Athena. Athena, who would drink coffee no matter the hour, and would goad you into doing the same, laughing each time you scrunched your nose in disgust at the smallest sip. Every time you raised the mug to your lips, the dark brown liquid not unlike sludge, you felt a stab of pain alongside the comfort of drinking her in. You refused to let your eyes water.  

He ordered herbal tea for himself, and you couldn’t help but to look over with thinly veiled envy, all the while Athena whispered in your ear, “ _really, tea, what are you trying to do, kill your tastebuds with boredom, drink yourself to sleep”,_ and you laughed bitterly, guiltily. (Were you not in mourning, after all?) 

He turned to you then, with eyes just a shade off hers, the grey more reminiscent of storms than the flash of swords. Whereas hers were sharp and calculating, his were murky. _Mysterious._ It was revolting. Despite this, he reeled you in, charmed you with snappy puns in a hoarse, gruff voice. The two of you sat there for a good forty minutes, the café mysteriously void of other people (even the barista disappeared within minutes of Poseidon’s entrance). When he left, you found yourself smiling for the first time in over a month.  

Poseidon returned the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that, staying longer with each visit. You came to look forward to your time with him: he was funny, with a seemingly never-ending supply of anecdotes, most of them involving sailors imbibing too much rum – you started to suspect who he was, his name niggling at the back of your mind. Athena hates him, however, this much you knew, so you ignored it. He remained – _had_ to remain – a mystery. Each time he visited the café emptied, the silence broken only by your laughter, and the world folded to the two of you. For three sweet afternoons, you were able to forget her, forget the war raging beyond the horizon. 

It was on the fourth day he invited you for a walk along the beach. You’d been talking for hours and the sun was setting. He promised an amazing view, and his smile was so sincere, so unlike Athena’s, that you agreed. 

When he raped you at the mouth of a cave, sea-water lapping up around your ankles and rough stone digging into your back, he whispered: “ _Athena never mentioned how easy you were.”_ Even as your stomach roiled in disgust and you realised who he was, as protestations fell from your lips alongside the name you could finally say out loud, a tiny part of you enjoyed it. (This would come to mark your downfall.) 

Over his shoulder, the sky burned. 

 

 

_iv._

By some kind of cosmically hilarious, privately horrifying, twist of fate, the war ended that afternoon. As Poseidon spilled into you, released you, cast you to the ground, Athena appeared, her shoulders heavy with death and destruction. Poseidon’s grin was ugly and self-satisfied; Athena, sharp creature that she is, caught on immediately, eyes flashing. ‘ _Athene Glaukopis_ ’ they call her, bright-eyed Athene – and it had never been more apt. She asked you only one thing: “ _did you enjoy it?_ ” 

She saw right through your lie, slight though it was, and leaving no more than a final withering look, she disappeared. Poseidon followed a moment later, after a salutation and a glib “ _cheers, darling.”_

Then all you could see was black as hate consumed you, tearing off your skin, your beauty, layer by layer by layer. 

 

 

_v._

In the mirror, snakes curl around the shells of your ears, hissing a name. You take it for yourself, bite into it, taste it: _Medusa._

You smile, and you are no longer beautiful. 

 


End file.
